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The board is investigating because the woman he had the affair with is a Chinese spy.

Neither the board nor the US government nor investors nor the average person gives a shit about a CEO having an affair as long it doesn't compromise his ability to do his job well.

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She was also the CEO of a large customer. That sounds like it could impact his job performance.
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Alleged Chinese spy unless I’m reading the article wrong? A Chinese intelligence asset could mean someone who just had CPC membership in college. Not that I’m saying Alice Huang isn’t a spy, I just would want more information before deciding.
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She was being monitored by the CIA, who believed she was a spy.

Also, just to be clear here: the story is that Jensen was also going to Taiwan to meet with this person who was helping Alibaba evade sanctions, when Jensen met with this person Alibaba reps were always there, and in the US Jensen was making media appearances saying that sanctions on China had to be lifted.

Bear in mind that multiple people at Supermicro were charged for allegedly smuggling servers to China, and that the reason Megaspeed is being investigated is for effectively the same thing. Jensen denied he had anything to do with Supermicro, it is going to be much harder to say the same thing here.

I don't think the affair itself is necessarily related to the direction this will shortly take.

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There is a huge difference between smugglers and spies though. Profit motive is all you need to be a smuggler, you don’t need espionage or anything else, you definitely don’t need a handler in zhongnanhai.
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> Profit motive is all you need to be a smuggler, you don’t need espionage or anything else

What you need to be a smuggler is to avoid prison.

When one side is fully aware that you are a smuggler that they can rat on to the other side whenever they want, even a child could blackmail you.

So that's one (fairly realistic imo) pathway from smuggler -> to espionage.

This is a hypothetical anyways.

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The core competency of smugglers is getting the goods delivered. Some smugglers are motivated beyond profit or avoiding jail.
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> She was being monitored by the CIA, who believed she was a spy.

MLK Jr. was being monitored by the FBI and CIA, who believed he was a Communist.

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Chinese spy can mean everything from “sell us more GPUs to China or I leak our affair” (which I think NVDA would be very happy with - they’ve already admitted to chip diversion, and their senior execs have been arrested for the same) to trade secrets being given to Huawei.

IMHO, I’m speculating, but I think the affair could’ve happened first, and then the MSS got involved for access and blackmail.

There is, after all, statistically a high correlation with rich billionaires and infidelity…

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It's unfortunate how it's perfectly rational for a board to want their CEOs doing just enough fraud/backchanneling/cosying-up-to-suspect-world-leaders to maximize shareholder value, as long as they're not getting caught/... in ways that overall minimize shareholder value.
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